


Pins and Feathers

by ExpatGirl



Series: Maybe Sprout Wings [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode: s09e03 I'm No Angel, F/M, Gen, Human Castiel, Rape/Non-con Elements, Reaper Retcon Retcon, Reapers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-21
Packaged: 2018-05-15 08:58:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5779663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpatGirl/pseuds/ExpatGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Maybe, he thinks, my penance is finally over.<i></i></i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pins and Feathers

**Author's Note:**

> This was painful to write. But I had to.

The first time Castiel meets her, she gives alms in the form of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She smiles quietly. She’s clean, as nothing else around him is clean.

 _Alms_ : the word is rooted deeply in Greek, though the root itself splits somewhere between mercy and pity. He hopes it’s the former and not the latter that motivated her. _But,_ he thinks, looking down at his own bedraggled appearance, _it’s probably not_. The sandwich is good, though, amazingly so. He decides that this particular combination of flavors is now his favorite.

Castiel’s hunger is keen, but his regret at being unable to repay the kindness is keener. Everything is so _physical_. Every emotion seems to have a bewildering counterpart lurking in his nerve endings, ready to overwhelm him. Is it always like this? Anxiety skitters along under the surface of the skin until it doesn’t sit right on him anymore; shame crushes, angelic disciplining that echoes in his bones; regret—being sorry—it cuts, jagged rather than incisive. Of course he’s felt _sorry_ , he’s felt whole universes of sorry (it seems to be his default state these days: _I’m so sorry, Dean. I’m so sorry, Sam_. _Sorry, Anna. Sorry, Balthazar. Sorry, Rachel._ _Sorry, sorry.)_ Remorse shot him through and cracked him wide open until he didn’t fit together properly.

But he’s never _felt_ it, not like this, not the skin-and-bone reality of it. There are 45 miles of nerves in the human body, and every emotion makes that journey and goes nowhere.

Oh, but then there’s gratitude: the gentle golden swell of it, soft as new down on the underside of a wing. It brings humility in its wake rather than humiliation. Everywhere he turns, he finds kindnesses unfolding and strange mercies falling at his feet, from people he cannot possibly do anything for. His new tattoo throbs slightly at his side, and he smiles a little at the pain.

Castiel wishes for even a scrap of his old power. Just a speck, and not for himself. He just wants enough to give proper thanks, to any of them. Even that woman in the church had been paying him a kindness, in her way, and he couldn’t even heal her husband in gratitude.

The need to give thanks and praise is intrinsic to him, core programming. He’s a creature made for devotion, and he would like to devote himself to this cause. He can’t shut it off, and he can’t do anything about it.

Helplessness steals his breath. He wonders if this is what drowning is like.

****

Castiel sees her again later that night, as the rain seeps into his shoes. He is pressed against the side of the building, like a bird sheltering on a cliff face. He almost doesn’t notice her at first, too intent on overcoming his pervasive exhaustion in order to plan his next move.

If he can get enough money together, he can get the bus to Kansas. He doesn’t know if the bus stops in Lebanon, but surely Sam and Dean wouldn’t mind driving somewhere within state lines to come get him. They cover the lower forty-eight several times a year; they’d hardly notice the drive. But then, how much _are_ bus tickets? The other times he's taken the bus, he didn't pay. He has exactly zero money and not much idea of how to get more. He’s used a payphone recently, though. He knows how much a long distance call would cost. He has Sam and Dean’s permanent phone numbers memorized, the phones they’ll only abandon in an extreme emergency. That’s, what, four phone calls? Undoubtedly a much more realistic sum of money than however much a bus ticket would cost. But he should check first. He doesn’t want to make them drive all this way if it’s not required.

 _Though,_ he tells himself, pulling his arms tighter around his knees, _they’d come get me. Even if I was farther away, they’d come for me if I needed them to._ The thought warms him a little.

A flash of movement catches his eye and he looks up, instantly on guard. He’d been drifting on that happy idea and forgot where he was. He’s still in danger, still vulnerable to a thousand natural shocks, even if the supernatural ones are less pressing now.

 _Oh_. It’s her, the alms-giver. He’s torn between raising his eyes to her in gratitude and lowering them in inexplicable shame. The emotions war briefly in his body, making him shudder. He settles for a nod and a half-smile. “Thanks again for the sandwich. That was very kind of you.”

“No problem.” Suddenly she’s crouching by him, umbrella in hand, making the rain abate temporarily. She looks more tired than before, but her smile is unchanged. “So. I’m gonna guess you don’t have anywhere to stay,” she says.

“Um, no. Not at the moment,” Cas says, forcing himself to maintain eye contact.

“Hmm. And I’m also gonna guess you’re pretty new to this.”

 _This_ being homelessness, he supposes. One of the men from the last camp had said the same thing to him. But _this_ could mean any of it, all of it, and she’d still be correct. _Dean was right_ , he thinks irritably.  _In every way that matters, I’m a child, and they can all tell_.

He nods, pushing his hair from his eyes. “Very.” He sighs, aims for wry and probably misses. “That obvious?”

She stands and holds out her hand. “Kinda, yeah.”

He takes it and joins her on her level. “To tell you the truth, I’ve only been out on my own for about four days. My family...well, let’s just say I’m not their favorite person right now.”

“So they _kicked you out on the street_? Harsh.”

“Harsh doesn’t even begin to describe them.” He smiles at her, hoping to reassure her and remove the look of distress on her face. “I have friends, though. Good friends, who’ll let me stay with them.”

“Where are they?” She looks at him through narrowed eyes, as though he might be lying to her.

“Several states over, I’m afraid. But we’ve...made plans to meet soon.” Now he _is_ lying to her, but he tells himself that he’s not. They will make plans to meet soon, so it’s not so much a lie as a slightly incorrect arrangement of time. He’s allowed to do that.

“I just have to get through the next day, and everything should be okay. All this will just be an interesting story to tell over a beer.”

That’s not a lie, either, he decides. By tomorrow he’ll have his plan finalized, and by the next, with any luck, he’ll be well on his way to Kansas and a roof over his head.

“Oh, that’s good,” she says, and her smile is back, Cas is glad to see. “Well, listen, um. I live pretty close by. Do you want to…” She trails off.

He cocks his head at her, trying to figure out what, exactly, she thinks he might want to do.

“Do you want to get out of the rain?” she finally asks, when it becomes clear that Cas isn’t going to tell her what he wants, because he doesn’t actually know.

“Oh! Um. Yes. Yes, please. That’s good of you.” Warmth floods him then, anointing his overstretched senses like a balm, and the relief is so great he almost weeps with it. She probably wouldn’t notice, his face is already so wet with rain, but he manages to keep the tears in check. Just in case.

“Okay,” she says with a nod. “This way. It’s only a couple of blocks.”

“Can I hold your umbrella for you?”

“What a gentleman,” she says, ducking her head.

They walk the whole way with their shoulders brushing.

****

 _Maybe_ , Cas thinks, as he steps into the damp heat of April’s shower, _my time of penance is finally over_. He’d only played God for a few weeks, but a blasphemy of that magnitude—not to mention the betrayal of dear friends—called for a suitably grave penance. And so he’d paid and paid, and if his heart wasn’t _glad_ it was at least _satisfied_ , knowing that the universe was merely bringing down on him what he deserved.

Still, he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t tired. He’d pay whatever price was necessary, of course. That was the way of things. But perhaps his book had finally been balanced. _Maybe_ , he thinks, chasing away the last of the lingering chill, _this is a good thing_. _The first of many, I hope._

April seemed to have a moment of hesitation when they’d finally arrived, and he couldn’t understand why until he remembered the reality he now inhabited: for all intents and purposes male (he wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but he hadn’t had time to consider it), and, as she pointed out, one she didn’t know. She was smaller than him, lighter, and almost certainly not trained in combat. Which made him a potential aggressor. The blood on his shirt definitely couldn’t have helped her impression of him. This was no good. He had to put her at ease, make it clear that his intentions were benign.

He’d given her his name, rather than the alias of Clarence Singer that he’d used at the tattoo parlor. He was warded now, his name was no longer a weapon that might be wielded against him and those around him. It seemed the right thing to do, to repay her benevolence with honesty, since he couldn’t repay it any other way.

He keeps his wounded shoulder out of the water, trying to preserve the bandage as much as he can. He doesn’t know when he’ll be able to get another, and he doesn’t want to ask April for one, lest he draw her attention back to the thing that gave her pause in the first place.

When he emerges from the shower, she greets him with a battered first aid box and tells him to sit down. The wounded shoulder doesn’t seem to trouble her now, and Castiel is relieved.

When she kisses him, a little later, he grapples with his own moment of uncertainty before the thought strikes him, bright and sudden: _Perhaps there **is** a way to thank her. _ Humans are physical creatures, after all (how well he knows this now), and that includes her. If he can’t pay back her kindness with Heavenly powers, then he might be able to do so in a more earthly way. The thought pleases him, and he leans into the next kiss, and the next. Another moment of uncertainty grips him as she leads him towards her room, where lit candles make the darkness soft and mild. She says _Hey, come on, I won’t break_ , and though he can’t see her eyes, he feels bolstered by her ever-present smile.

Later still, his mind drifts towards the ceiling he’s staring at. He thinks: _I finally understand what bodies are for._ There’s no angelic equivalent, not really, and no adequate words to describe it. It’s a physical sensation that feeds into his his emotions rather than the other way around. No wonder Balthazar was such a fan. No wonder Anna sought comfort in this way, no wonder Dean is such an avid practitioner. And he knows it’s oxytocin and endorphins hitting his system, a natural high. He _knows_ it’s an involuntary response, just another process, but it doesn’t matter. Right now the process doesn’t _matter_ ; all that matters is that she is kind and warm and on top of him and maybe his penance really is over, at last. All that matters is that maybe he’ll get to do this again, and often, with people that he likes. He smiles.

Briefly, he thinks again of Dean, and of his ill-fated attempt to relieve Cas of his virginity (not that it had been a burden, despite what Dean thought). How frightened he’d been at the prospect of trying this with someone he didn’t know. On the verge of tears, nearly. But he had been determined to see it through, in spite of his fear. It seemed an important bonding experience to have with Dean, not so dissimilar to the tough affection and strange rituals that developed among his own troops. Necessary for cohesion and morale, and therefore worth doing, despite his misgivings. Of course, in the end he’d done something wrong and nothing happened. He’d felt guilty at his sense of relief, then, but maybe it had all been for the best.

****

He’s a fool. His warding—the very thing he spent the last of his money on, the thing he spent so much time agonizing over, the thing that made him feel safe—has a fatal flaw in it. Fatal, indeed, he realizes, as he flexes his wrists against the ropes. He’d only warded himself against his own kind: Heavenly creatures, angels of the Lord. He’d made no provisions for Reapers: creatures of the Veil, angels of Death. How could he have been so _stupid_?

 _Easily,_ his own voice bitterly laughs at him. _Your stupidity is second only to your vanity._

But then, who could have guessed that a Reaper would go rogue? They are, on the whole, a much more contented class of being than their cousins, filled with the absolute certainty of their purpose in a way that Castiel cannot even imagine now.

As if reading his thoughts, the Reaper wearing April’s face laughs at him and runs her thumb through the blood on his own blade. “I can’t believe you actually said your name _out loud_ , Castiel.” She licks the blood from her thumb. “You’re supposed to be a strategist! That’s what they told me, anyway. Well, here’s a tip: incognito is the rule of thumb when you’re on the run.”

That stings, perhaps even more than the cuts on his body do, but he has no time for that. He’s got to get out of these bonds and incapacitate her somehow. A banishing sigil won’t work, but there are one or two Reaper-specific sigils he might be able to try, if he can just…

“Whatever you’re thinking, it won’t work,” her voice cuts in, and the blade joins it a moment later, just above the useless tattoo on his side. His grip on consciousness slips a little.

Distraction. When in doubt, stall for time. “So that’s how you found me,” he says, trying not to gasp.

“Yep,” she grins. “I was just _waiting_ for you to identify yourself so I could make my move. And you didn’t disappoint.”

“That wasn’t you in the alley.” Castiel’s eyes burn. Those kindnesses had been real, and April paid for them. He swallows. “When you’re done with me, promise me you’ll let her go.”

She rolls her eyes, April’s kind smile suddenly mocking and hard. “Let her _go_?” She leans down and pats his face. “Oh, handsome. That’s not how this works. Reapers reap, no matter what. I’ve sent your girlfriend out into the Veil you so thoughtfully fucked up.”

“What, when?”

“The minute you stepped into that bathroom.” She straightens. “I thought you’d _never_ leave.”

He pushes outward against the ropes, but they don’t budge. He needs to get out of them, out of this apartment. He tries to think, but blood loss is beginning to take its toll. He tries to think, he tries…

****

When he comes to, Dean’s hands are on his face, and it’s the only part of his body that feels remotely like it belongs to him.

Dean lied to save him. Dean _lied_ to save him. Dean _saved_ him. Dean’s his savior. The man he saved has saved him, and life is beautiful. He doesn’t even stop to consider how Dean found him; he’s too grateful, too joyous, too tired, and the combination of those things makes him collapse into the back seat of the Impala with a hysterical laugh. Dean looks at him, then, with evident concern, but all Cas can do is stretch out across the back seat and smile vaguely at the roof.

They’re going to Kansas. He’s been alone for almost a week, and it felt like forty years, but he’s not alone anymore.

 _Maybe_ , he thinks, as the engine revs, _my penance is finally over._

 

**Author's Note:**

> "Pins and feathers" is a technique for splitting stone. It's done by driving a wedge, called a pin, and two shims, called feathers, into the block of stone and then hammering until the stone splits.


End file.
